Furry Toys Tours offers teddybear tourism

Furry Toys Tours is a new service that offers people the chance to send their cuddly toys to Paris and have photographic evidence sent back to show for it.

In return for €100 (about £88) plus shipping, loving owners can treat their toy to a “rich and unforgettable journey through the wonders of the beautiful city of Paris". The company travels around the city with the attending toys and takes photos of them in front of various key landmarks. The tour group also stops for picnics in Parisian parks and cafes for lunch and tea breaks.

The company was founded by Denis Gerber, who works by day developing financial trading algorithms, having spent 10 years as an investment banker. He told Wired.co.uk: “Paris is the most visited city in the world by human beings and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be for furry toys as well.”

The business was inspired by the 2001 film Amélie, which saw the eponymous character steal her father’s garden gnome and send it travelling the world thanks to her airline steward friend. Shortly after the gnome’s disappearance, the father starts receiving mysterious photos of it in various exotic locations.

The service is intended for those who want to create a gift/play a trick on their loved ones while also creating a gift without having to stump up the cash for a flight to France.

The site specifies that it doesn’t discriminate and can accommodate “all kinds of furry friends, no matter their age, species, race, colour, gender, nationality, condition, as well as religious beliefs or practices”.

The basic fee gets your furry friend the “Paris Essentials Tour”, a seven day trip that takes in the city’s 16 most famous landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Nôtre-Dame, and the Louvre. For an additional €50 you can get a four day thematic “Extension Tour”, selecting from History, Arty, Chic and Da Vinci Code.

Toy owners get daily updates via emailed photos of their loved ones’ adventures and other pictures are posted onto Facebook.

Gerber told Wired.co.uk in a phone conversation: “We don’t sell trips to furry toys, we don’t sell pictures, what we actually sell is a kind of emotion.” He suggested secretly stealing the toys from their owners and sending them to him: “The day your child or partner receives their first email containing a photo of their toy, that is the emotion we are selling. It is sweet and poetic.”

At the end of the trip, owners get at least 30 photos of the toy’s sightseeing adventures printed out and an accompanying CD with digital copies of the photos. They will also receive a little souvenir from Paris and a travel certificate.

Users need to post their toy to the company in Paris at the start of the trip and will then get the toy posted back to them via recorded delivery.

Customers can rest assured that their teddy bear will be in safe hands. Gerber was out and about with some of the toys during the recent Paris protests and said that he really wanted to go and take some photos of the toys in amongst the action but refrained from doing so because he feared for their safety. He said: "We don't provide insurance because it would make the service too expensive, but we will make sure that there are no kidnappings."